Chicago police officers shot and wounded a man late Friday night after witnessing a homicide on the city’s West Side.
Officers were on patrol around 11:30 p.m. near the intersection of Maplewood Avenue and Division Street in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, police said in a statement.
They witnessed a shooting and intervened, police said, engaging a male subject and firing shots.
One witness said he was sitting at Guerrero's Tacos & Pizza, a popular late night restaurant in the area, when he saw a gray vehicle drive slowly through the area several times before someone inside the car opened fired in the direction of the restaurant. A man was standing on the street nearby and talking with a woman when the shooting occurred, witnesses said. He pulled out his own weapon and fired shots into the car, fatally striking one of the occupants, according to the witness. It was unclear if the person killed was the shooter.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office identified the man killed as 18-year-old Louis Rodriguez, of the 1300 block of North Oakley Blvd, in the city’s Wicker Park neighborhood.
The officers on patrol pulled up in an unmarked squad car, witnesses said, and opened fire on the man on the street. He sustained non-life threatening injuries and was taken to an area hospital, according to police. No officers were injured in the shooting.
Authorities are treating both shootings as two separate incidents, according to police, and the Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the incident. The officers involved will be placed on administrative duties for 30 days per department policy.
